Tuesday, 12 May 2015

The Best Surprise Is No Surprise - Performance Management and Appraisals

Remember
that tag line for the Holiday Inn a few years back? The Best Surprise Is No Surprise?

Well,
we pinched it and use it to describe what we think a great appraisal process
should be: no surprises.

That
means that Performance Management has to be handled with care, empathy, respect
and most importantly of all, day-to-day.

Too
many times people tell us what horrible appraisals they’ve had. A common theme is when their manager presents
them with something that happened a few months back that the appraisee hadn’t
realised was a problem. In other cases,
the manager has a long list of things that should have been done or could have
been done better.

In
every situation, it was only during the formal appraisal setting that the
catalogue of errors was introduced. Sadly, this happens a lot.

In
a great appraisal nothing should come as a shock or surprise; appraisals should
be a summary of the year or six month’s work of the appraisee and not an
opportunity to dump on the appraisee things that haven’t gone so well all in
one go.

That’s
what Performance Management is for – to deal with issues as they arise, not
months down the road when the details may get lost or muddled but right then,
in the moment. Yet this is when a lot of
managers miss fantastic chances to get more from their staff.

When
a problem or issue is spotted and dealt with right away, first, it gets the
issue out in the open so that relevant solutions can be discussed; second, it
short-circuits the possibility of festering resentments where the manager
somehow thinks his/her staff member is deliberately doing something wrong and
that they should know better.

It’s
all common sense isn’t it? You see a
mistake, you take the person aside to discuss it and give them support and keep
a ‘light’ eye on things till you feel confident that they’re meeting your
expectations.

So
why doesn’t it happen like that so much of the time? Why are appraisals filled with ‘surprises’
and shocks?

This
is the nub of the matter. Many managers
simply don’t like having uncomfortable conversations, they hope the problem
will fix itself without their intervention, they’re afraid of other people’s
emotions, so they don’t do it. Then
within the more formal setting of an annual appraisal they can hide behind the
process.

We
heard of one situation where a manager was upset because one of his staff was
taking longer lunch hours than the agreed time.
Every time the employee came back ‘late’ from lunch, the manager’s
resentment grew. He groused to other
people, including colleagues of Mr Latelunch; he kept a log of every time Mr
Latelunch was late, even by a couple of minutes; he began to obsess about it
and assumed Mr Latelunch was doing it on purpose. Finally, he presented his ‘evidence’ to HR
for them to sort nearly one year down
the line.

What
did he never do? He never spoke to Mr
Latelunch about it; he never even casually mentioned that he needed to keep an
eye on his timekeeping.

Something
simple became huge in the manager’s mind and of course once it was escalated to
HR it became even more huge. HR was annoyed
with the manager for not dealing with it earlier and even more annoyed that it
had been dumped on them.

And
that was why we were brought in when they were creating a new appraisal
process; they didn’t want it undermined from the beginning if the managers
didn’t have the skills to deal with the day-to-day.

Repeat
our mantra when it comes to Appraisals – The Best Surprise is No Surprise!